Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T12:22:40.197Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

On the Groups of Britton's Theorem A

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

George S. Sacerdote*
Affiliation:
Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

In his simple proof of the unsolvability of the word problem for groups [1], J. L. Britton proved a normal form theorem (Britton's Lemma) for groups obtained by the HNN construction. In the appendix to that paper he described a generalization of the HNN construction and sketched the proof of a generalization of Britton's Lemma for this new construction, Britton's Theorem A. In this note we demonstrate that all groups obtained by means of this generalized construction are in fact HNN groups; and it will follow that Theorem A is simply a restatement of Britton's Lemma. This argument makes it clear that while Theorem A can be (and has been) useful in various group theoretic situations, in practice, every application of this generalized construction can be replaced by a straightforward application of the HNN construction.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Mathematical Society 1976

References

1. Britton, J. L., The word problem, Ann. Math. 77 (1963), 1632.Google Scholar
2. Higman, G., Neumann, B. H., and Neumann, H., An embedding theorem for groups, J. London Math. Soc, 24 (1949), 247254.Google Scholar
3. Miller, C. F. III, On Buttons Theorem A, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc, 19 (1968), 11511154.Google Scholar